Mystery Still Shrouds RCMP Campground Inquiry

The owner of the New Brunswick campground that is currently at the center of a mysterious investigation said he fielded 167 phone calls from nosey people searching for details on Tuesday evening (June 23), according to the Saint John Telegraph-Journal.

John Weaver is the owner of Hidden Valley Campground (shown at left) in Kingston. At the end of a tar and gravel road court sprinkled with the odd house along either side, the campground has become the focus of an investigation that began Monday at noon.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) say there are 12 officers at the site, including a forensic team from Fredericton.

“It’s get nerve-wracking to answer the phone and keep answering the same question,” Weaver said.

“I have people coming out of the woodwork, calling me up, seeing if I’m all right and they don’t even like me,” Weaver said, with a little laugh. “It’s getting frustrating.”

Weaver said there are 56 sites on 630 acres.

“I have a canteen with no customers. I have a campground with no customers.”

The campground, Weaver said, is staffed 24-7 so if someone committed a crime on his property, it would have been hard for it to go unnoticed.

“There’s not too many activities that can go on at this campground or soil turned over or anything like that, that I wouldn’t notice.”

Neither the police nor Weaver will say what the RCMP is searching for. Weaver did confirm that police haven’t used any of the earth-moving equipment on the site.

The search warrant the RCMP handed to Weaver was sealed, and even Sgt. Steve Gourdeau of the Hampton RCMP wasn’t privy to its contents.

‘We haven’t done any digging at all,” Gourdeau said.

Some TV and radio reports had said the RCMP had a person of interest and that Weaver was a suspect, but Gourdeau said those reports were wrong. “I did not speak those words,” Gourdeau said.

There are no suspects or persons of interest, he said. Just a tip that may prove to be nothing more than a hoax

The RCMP, he said, is not targeting a cold case such as a missing person or an unsolved murder. Police received tips from a number of sources that point to something criminal, Gourdeau said, but that was as far as he would go.

“We’re not being secretive. We’ve got to deal with facts. To say anything at this point would be speculation.”

“Nothing,” Gourdeau said, when asked if anything had been found. “Zero.”

Under a sweltering sun Wednesday afternoon and a swarm of bugs, an RCMP officer checked a lone car as it approached the gate. The man is one of only two long-term campers allowed beyond the gates.

Driving a shiny Mercedes with a for sale sign in the back window, the man held up a copy of the newspaper to the lone RCMP guard.

“You made the news,” said the man.

He then drove through the white, wooden gate and disappeared behind the trees.